Wise Men Don't Know How It Feels
by Roach Patrol
Summary: "I'm half human, you know. On my mother's side." Theta Sigma has an exceptionally rocky adolescence.  Theta/Koschei.


Once upon a time, when Koschei was still very young, his friend Theta Sigma received a private message on his portable data processor. It was encrypted so as not to show an origin point and showed an image of a humanoid female in a passionate embrace with with an octopoid of indeterminate gender; the letters underneath had read 'earth girls are easy', in pan-galactic standard logograms.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Koschei asked.

Theta had stared at the message for a long moment, then tapped the delete key.

"What's what?" he'd asked. His face was perfectly, horribly blank.

"Nothing," Koschei had said, unnerved. "Here, let's do problem 34."

Theta had remained uncharacteristically blank and quiet for the rest of the day. He answered every question posed to him in a clear, precise tone, and packed his bag after class with the precision of an architect. Then he walked, quite steadily, back to their shared rooms.

There was only one conclusion for Koschei to draw: something had upset his friend, and upset him badly.

Theta never talked about his feelings, if he could help it. He never talked about anything, if he could help it. Theta believed, with a frightening, near-religious sincerity, that everything their teachers told them about What It Meant To Be A Time Lord was absolutely true. It didn't help that he was also a complete failure at nearly everything associated with _becoming_ A Time Lord. He got the lowest marks, of anyone, ever. He had no sense of direction; he had almost no sense of time. He was late to classes, he forgot his homework, he struggled miserably with string dynamics. He stammered, if you got him upset, and sometimes he mixed his words up even if you didn't. His handwriting was atrocious.

People whispered that he'd gone and dunked his whole head in the Untempered Schism and it had melted his brain, or that he'd been dropped repeatedly as a child, or that there had been a power failure in his loom, or that he might even had been gestated and there had been_ complications_. People sometimes asked Koschei if he knew, or could ask Theta for them, but he didn't and he wouldn't, and that was generally that.

But for all his many failures, Theta never stopped, and he never made excuses, and he never complained. He tackled each and every problem with a kind of strained, dogged optimism: it was as if he thought that if he just _meant _it enough, _this_ time would be _different_.

Koschei finds him in their courtyard, going through their Primitive Cultures project: a staged demonstration of the old Earth war-poem, _144 Lamentations_. As poorly as Theta Sigma preforms in the many arts of the mind, he's an absolute fiend with an edged weapon and has won prizes away from classmates twice his age. His poise and confidence shine magnificently through every sweep and sway of his macuahuitl: the broad obsidian teeth of the wooden sword glitter in the light of the setting suns, scattering flecks of sky-orange and Prydonian-red across the pale courtyard stones. In the center of the whirl, his body a whiplash of savage grace and his face pale and hard as the stones, Theta conducts himself perfectly through each stanza, poetry in motion.

"Mind if I cut in?" Koschei asks. Theta stills, caught perfectly between _Moon Descending _and _Wind Through Grass_. He nods. His face is still a perfect mask, but his weight is poised eagerly forwards.

Koschei is best at fencing with whippy metal foils, but for the _Lamentations_ he orders up the macuahuitl's partner-weapon, the huitzauhquiclub with its substantial heft and the sharp black teeth set into the crown. Theta eyes him approvingly, a little challengingly, and he smirks in return.

They start off slowly, in a mirror form: Theta leads, and Koschei echoes him. He doesn't have the sheer instinct for the blade that Theta has, but he quite nearly makes up for it with technical expertise. Theta's face relaxes, fractionally, as they complete the set for _Long Drought _and move into the faster, intricate _Hope Arises_.

At the last step of the verse concludes Theta quirks an eyebrow and breaks form, swinging his long blade towards Koschei's stomach. Surprised, Koschei parries almost too late, clumsily knocking the blade aside. Theta easily reverses the momentum and comes back for a swipe at Koschei's neck. Yelling in outrage, Koschei parries that one with an offensive down-sweep, knocking Theta back, and chases him with heavy blows all around the courtyard. It's like trying to swat a leaf on the wind; it's not for nothing that Thete's the best swordsman in several grades. He dances maddeningly just out of reach of Koschei's club, darting in from time to time to parry or counter-thrust and then skip away, mocking.

"I'll get you yet, Thete," Koschei pants.

"You'll have to catch me, dear Koschei," Theta replies smugly, and scores a touch on Koschei's shoulder that catches at the loose school robes and shreds them like tissue.

"_Theta!_" Koschei squawks, scandalized. "These were my favorites!"

"You look like a proper savage now, eh?" Thete teases. "Bare-armed and ferocious!"

"I'll show you ferocious," Koschei threatens, but with his robes almost falling off him and a club that seemed to be growing heavier by the moment, he can hardly put up much of a fight. Theta bounces around him now like a lightning storm, his face alight and his sword a black blur, impossible to score against or even keep up with. He finally catches the long teeth of Kochei's club with his own sword's serrations, and twists it neatly out of Koschei's grasp. It clatters across the cobblestones, spitting sparks.

"Peace!" Koschei calls out, laughing, and falls back against the wall. Theta follows him closely, that fey look still set on his pale features, the black sword of his coming to catch on the sagging front placket of Koschei's tattered robes, precisely between his laboring hearts.

"You're going to cost me a regeneration if you're not careful," Koschei tells him, "and that's on top of a new set of robes."

Theta only takes another step forwards, until they've formed a kind of sword sandwich, and rests his forehead mutely against Koschei's. Koschei sighs and threads his fingers up through Theta's shaggy pale hair, instigating one of their loose, easy mental embraces.

"Will you tell me what's wrong, Thete?" Koschei asks, pressing a little mental encouragement through the other boy's mind like a sheet of candy-paper slipped under a door. Theta laughs, a low hoarse croak of a sound, and brings their mouths together. It's an uncomfortable, unfamiliar pressure, compounded by the sudden torrent of alien hunger flooding into Koschei's mind from his friend's. Koschei goes absolutely tense with confusion, dropping their mental connection like a live wire. After a moment Theta leans back, and looks into his eyes. His own are gray and worried, and as Koschei watches, they fill with an anger he's never seen in them, almost a hatred.

"You don't understand," Theta says, low and vicious, "_None _of you."

Koschei doesn't know what to do. Theta angry is like trees flying, or suns freezing, or water screaming. He stands there, staring, and Theta whirls away and dashes his sword to pieces on the courtyard stones.

"I'm half human, you know," he says to the bits of black glass, the words tumbling out of him just as sharply. "On my mother's side."

"I, I didn't know," Koschei says. "I thought you were-" and he bites his tongue, but it's too late. Theta laughs again, hoarse and a bit hysterical.

"Thought I was what, Koschei? Mmm? Thought I was _normal_?" he sneers. "Just stupid? It's alright, everyone else who doesn't know thinks so too. You're _precisely average._"

"Theta-" he entreats, stepping forward, but the boy flings up a warning hand. "Theta, you're my_ friend_," he says anyway, but it isn't enough, suddenly nothing feels like enough. He doesn't know if anything will ever feel like enough again.

"Don't, Kosh," Theta says wearily. "Just don't."

He strides away, nearly running.

Koschei waits for him, but Theta doesn't come back to their courtyard. He doesn't even come back to their room, not for two whole days, and when he does, he's _different_. There's a red suction mark pressed into his neck and that fierce anger pressed even more indelibly into his gaze. He still tries hard in his classes, puts in long afternoons in remedial courses and longer nights studying. He still scrapes gamely through vortex theory and string manipulation and quantum dynamics, he goes through the _Lamentations_ like he was born to perform them but gone is anything resembling hopeful sincerity: it has hardened into a kind of furious determination. Koschei's friend has gone somewhere Koschei doesn't know how to follow, and in his skin is a frightening stranger, someone who walks with his chin set high and his stride a rolling, swaggering challenge, someone who smells like danger and the forbidden arts of the body.

Koschei keeps to his own side of the room more than ever before, and watches, and wonders. For the first time in his life, he feels _insufficient_, andhe doesn't like it.

He doesn't like it at all.


End file.
